Purveyors of Fine American Farmstead Cheese

Month: February 2012

This Week at Saxelby Cheesemongers: There’s No Place Like Home, or All the World Loves a Market

First off, sorry cheese lovers for the lack of communication over these past few weeks. I was out of town, playing serious hooky and eating as much Costa Rican cheese as I could get my paws on. The mecca to conduct this glorious (and a bit gluttonous) sampling was none other than San Jose’s historic central market, a sturdy, amiable, and decidedly simple edifice nestled into the heart of town.

Walking into the cramped, bustling corridors of this 1880’s market gave me pause because for many years, customers entering the Essex Market for the first time, though they hail from destinations across the globe all have the same comment: ‘This market reminds me of home.’ There is some kind of universal sensibility that allows people to recognize and immediately identify with a public market. They wander the aisles, their eyes taking in the myriad piles of fruits and vegetables, ogling tiers of baked goods, smelling bunches of dried herbs hanging from hooks, and sizing up slabs of meat.

In many ways, San Jose’s Central Market is very much like Essex: a simple square of a building, low to the ground, stalls divided from one another by steel beams, with high ceilings and skylights of glass enmeshed with shatterproof wire to let the daylight seep through. However, if the Essex Market boasts 30 stalls, San Jose’s has 300. The place is absolutely labyrinthine, or perhaps more appropriately, onion-esque, with a core of stalls at the center extending outward towards the edges of the building in hectic concentric layers.

The sensation of wandering this market is one of true wonder (and a bit of vertigo) as you try to make your way around, and is even more baffling when trying to find your way back to a particular stall. Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbed and backward GPS system would have definitely come in handy more than a handful of times as I tried to retrace my steps back to some especially lovely vendors.

There was the old gentleman with all manner of knives… I was in search of one small enough to make a picnic with, but his shop was a nod to the overwhelming nature of the rainforest, agriculture, and the sprawl of the city over the years. He sold everything from pocket knives to full on machetes. Coils of lasso with varying thicknesses and colors adorned the walls from floor to ceiling.

Then there was the helados shop, a business started in 1901 and thriving till the present day with just one perfectly sweet and refreshing flavor of sorbet: vanilla mixed with cinnamon. Young boys in blue caps and aprons served a clamoring clientele that flanked the stall’s three outward facing countertops, dutifully scooping mounds of the ochre-colored confection as quickly as it was gobbled up.

The cheese shops were simple affairs, consisting of refrigerated display cases filled with trays of locally made fresh cheese. The most popular was a cheese called Turrialba named after a nearby town. Soft and queso fresco-like, the cheese was sold in three stages of ripeness: ‘tierno’ meaning soft and fresh, semi-curado, and curado. Then there was the queso palmita: a mozzarella-like ball of cheese named for its likeness to heart of palm.When cut open, circular layers of cheese surround one another concealing a tart and lemony core of fresh curd.

But the most impressive sights of all were the sodas, diminutive mom and pop lunch counters that served quick, hearty, and simple meals to marketgoers. The one that we stopped at made me blush for ever calling my own shop small. It was no more that 6 feet by 6 feet, and contained three workers, a cutting board station, a sink, and a small flat-top grill where my lunch of tortillas and salchichon with shredded lettuce and crema was prepared. We cozied up next to our neighbor on two of their three stools and savored our delicious lunch. The kicker came when the woman washing the vegetables loaded a bus tub of dirty dishes onto what appeared to be a low-hanging shelf, only to watch it be hauled up via pulley onto their second floor of operations! A tiny room was perched atop the I-beams of the diner, cloaked in corrugated metal. It is to this day the tiniest restaurant I have ever seen.

So I sign off this week with a rallying cry (and I guess a bit of a gushy love letter) for markets. In their very humble way, they are among our cities’ most important assets.

This Week at Saxelby Cheesemongers: Cheese & Culture! Paul Kinstedt’s 11,000 year History of Cheese on Cutting the Curd… Plus Saxelby’s Less Scholarly Favorite Historical Anecdotes From the Aforementioned Text.

To say that humans and cheese have had a long and loving relationship is a bit of an understatement. Since time immemorial, we’ve been coaxing curds and whey into a mind-boggling array of fantastic cheeses, fresh, aged, and at times freakish.

Today on Cutting the Curd, we have the privilege of talking with professor Paul Kinstedt about his new book‘Cheese & Culture’which will make its debut in March of this year from Chelsea Green Publishing. The book chronicles our rich and buttery cheese history, all the way back to the fertile crescent. Here are some of our favorite historical accounts of famous cheesemakers and cheese eaters that you may not (or may very well have!) heard before, compliments of Mr. Kindstedt’s research…

Monster or Cheesemaker?

In Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ Odysseus and his crew land on the isle of Sicilyin search of the feared and terrible Cyclops. They galumph around for a while until they find his dwelling place which, SURPRISE! is home to a tidy little cheesemaking operation. The heroes hide out in the cave untilthe Cyclopsreturns (as my sister Megan would say,a potentially bad life choice) but luckily for them, the monster doesn’t see them and begins his daily ritual of making cheese, coagulating the curd and pressing it into woven baskets.

Moral of the story: Don’t hate on monsters. They like cheese too!

Fast forward to France in the year AD 800-ish. The Emperor Charlemagne and his entourage are trekkingthrough France, probably en route to some medieval military special ops. They get waylaid, and stop at a monastery for the night. The abbot, being rightly surprised by their arrival, is forced to make a fancy dinner party on the fly. (Remember this story the next time you’re stressed about people coming over for dinner… at least they’re not Charlemagne.) Now, it being a last minute thing, and the fact being that good Catholics don’t eat meat on certain days made for a pretty tough dinner order for the abbot to fill. He sagely concluded that they’d serve cheese for dinner, and brought out a stinky wheel of something or other for the nobility to enjoy.

Why didn’t I eat the rind?!

So, the story goes that Charlemagne dug into the cheese with great relish, cutting off the rind and scooping out the gooey paste within. The abbot watched in dismay, and after a few more bites, dared to inquire what in the heck the Emperor thought he was doing. In a nice way of course. The gist of the conversation was something like this: ‘Why are you cutting off the rind, sir? Don’t you know that’s the best part?!’

Moral of that story: Eat the rind. Monks know a thing or two about cheese.

Tune in to Cutting the Curd today from 5:30 to 6:00 for a sneak peak at this incredible new book, and stay tuned for an NYC book release party with Saxelby Cheesemongers! Till next week, eat cheese and be merry!

This Valentine’s Day, Saxelby Cheesemongers and Nunu Chocolates have joined forces to bring you a sweet & savory treat that’s sure to make your Valentine swoon: Our ‘Matches Made in Heaven’ gift box! We’ve been playing cupid with pairings of delicious farmstead fromage and handmade chocolate truffles that are rich enough to make even that little winged guy blush. Whether it’s for your sweetie, or some lucky cheese lover that you love, they’re sure to find a match made in heaven in this little box.

Each Matches Made in Heaven gift box includes three half-pound wedges of cheese, six Nunu chocolates, and a special pairing guide, all wrapped up in a beautiful re-usable wooden box.

Orders must be placed by Tuesday 2/7 by midnight for shipping on Thursday 2/9. Or by Saturday 2/11 by midnight to be shipped on Monday 2/13 All orders will be shipped FedEx standard overnight.

Orders can also be picked up at the Essex Street Market! Just choose ‘In store pickup’ when checking out and write a note in the comments box to let us know when you’ll be stopping by!

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This week on Cutting the Curd, we’ll head to Oklahoma to see what’s doing in the world of cheese and dairy! We’ll be joined by Suzy Thompson and Steve Reynolds, owners of Forward Foods to chat about their fabulous shop, and what they’re excited about in their local cheese world.